Hazel Weakly - Abstractions as Bridges

Have you ever wondered about what makes a good abstraction vs a bad one? Do you want to examine potential reasons why efforts to develop abstractions at a company or in a project take hold, and some don't? Or what it takes to develop an abstraction that reaches beyond the technical corner of your company or project and becomes something that helps actually shape how you think about the entire problem? Understanding the process of developing abstractions, especially as a leader, is really about understanding the process of grief. Even if you get to build the abstraction, it won't be the one you pictured, or envisioned. You're going to need to take the seeds you've born, carefully curated, and lovingly built up over time... And watch them die. To build an abstraction is to hold the heart of your humanity in your hands. Plant your soul into the ground, and be reborn. In this session, I'm going to introduce my thoughts on abstraction, how it works, why it sometimes works and why it sometimes doesn't, and how one can actually take an abstraction and flesh it out to the point where it takes on a life of its own. With that, you should be able to have a better grasp on how ideas can take root in a way that bridges people and domains together.

Hazel Weakly

Hazel spends her days working on building out teams of humans as well as the infrastructure, systems, automation, and tooling to make life better for others. She’s worked at a variety of companies, across a wide range of tech, and knows that the hardest problems to solve are the social ones. Hazel currently serves as a Director on the board of the Haskell Foundation, as a Fellow of the Nivenly Foundation, and is fondly known as the Infrastructure Witch of Hachyderm (a popular Mastodon instance). She also created the first official Haskell “setup” Github Action and helped turn it into an active community-maintained project. She enjoys traveling to speak at conferences, appearing on podcasts, mentoring others, and sharing what she’s learned with the world. One of her favorite things is watching someone light up when they understand something for the first time, and a life goal of hers is to help as many people as possible experience that joy. She also loves shooting pool and going swing dancing, both as a leader and a follower.